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Morana's jaw clenched, her hands fisting as fury filled her body. Her hands shook as she gripped them together, keeping her torso and her gaze still. Shark. Her father was a shark and she could not bleed. Not a single drop. But in learning not to bleed, she'd also learned how to draw blood.
Staying still, keeping her mask in place, a small sneer curling her lips, she spoke.
"Your men couldn't get within a mile of the place, could they?"
She saw the lines around his eyes tighten as his lips pressed together. "You are to remain chaste until your marriage. That's how this works, that's what I've always told you. If you deliberately set out to disobey me..."
Morana laughed. "You will what?"
"I choose your husband, Morana," he told her in an icy voice. "Remember that."
Morana grit her teeth and bit her tongue. She'd hit this stone wall and bruised herself so many times she'd lost count. She detested this world. She detested the way every man thought himself a self-entitled jackass. She hated how every woman either had to bend to their will or suffer for life. She despised this world. And yet, it was the only semblance of a home
she'd ever known. She wondered sometimes why she hadn't run away. She had the money, she had the skills, she had it all. And she'd stayed for some reason she couldn't find anymore. And now, with the codes in the wind, she had to stay.
"Is that all you wanted to speak to me about?" she asked stiffly, keeping her voice as calm as she could.
"This conversation is not over."
"Yes, it is."
"I want a name."
"And I won't give you one."
They stared each other down, her head pounding dully, exhaustion seeping into her bones but she didn't even twitch. Morana stood up and turned to leave.
"More men will be on your tail from now on," her father's voice stopped her. "I've ordered them to detain you if you slip the leash."
Her body almost quivered in her rage before she locked it in place. Leash? She wasn't a fucking dog. She sure as hell wasn't a fucking daughter.
'When it comes to death, you're mine.'
As the words from minutes ago came to her, the wheels in her mind started to churn. She inhaled deeply. "Send your men after me at their own risk, father," she informed him coolly. "Any one of them lays a finger on me and I will shoot."
Her father paused, before speaking. "They will shoot back."
She remembered the blue eyes of the man who'd claimed his right to kill her. Nobody else would be killing her. She knew he'd been serious.
She shrugged. "Then they will die."
Before her father could utter another word, Morana walked out of the study and towards her own wing, quickening her steps once she was out on her own. She hurried up to her room and once inside, she locked the door. Undressing and freshening up, she took the drive out of the clutch and placed it in her bedside drawer. Then, tired and numb, she slid into her soft brown sheets, settling into her pillows and sighing as she stared out the window.
Not for the first time in her life, it hit her how truly, truly alone she was.
Her father wanted a puppet he could control and parade around to his whims. She knew he'd been serious about the marriage. And she knew that she would never marry someone like that. She wondered sometimes what would have been better - having had his love before he turned cold, leaving her with some childhood memories, or this aloofness that had existed between them forever.
She remembered being snubbed again and again when she'd been a little girl, remembered how early on she'd promised herself to never allow anyone to snub her again, how quickly she had hardened herself. A string of nannies had raised her, women who'd never stayed long enough for her to form a bond with them, and by the time she'd hit adolescence, she'd known she wouldn't bond with anyone, not in this prison, not in this world. So, she'd turned to computers, and poured her heart into them. College had been a battle she'd won only by telling her father how profitable it would be to have a resource like her on his side. He'd eventually agreed, with guards on her tail every single day, limiting her contact with people. And then she'd met Jackson.
Asshole Jackson who'd led her to asshole Tristan Caine.
Morana exhaled loudly, blinking. She didn't understand him. Honestly, she didn't even want to, but since he kept showing up and since she had to deal with him anyways, she'd rather know what or who she was dealing with than be in the dark.
And with Tristan Caine, she always, always seemed to be in the dark. The man sprouted absolute nonsense one second, claiming his right to kill her like she was a prized gazelle on the run, his hate of her genuine. But he'd threatened her a little too many times for her to believe it. And even if he did intend to kill her, she really didn't care since she slept under the same roof as the man who could kill her any moment without flinching.
No. It wasn't his death claim-slash-threat-slash-words that bothered her. Much. It was his actions. He shoved her away like she singed him one second, and saved her life in a way the next. He cut himself on her one second and showed up at her meeting the next.
He was a pendulum. Swinging from one extreme to another within seconds. And that confounded her and irritated her because she couldn't get a read on him. At all. And she hated it.
